Best of
New-Weird

2018

Nothing is Everything


Simon Strantzas - 2018
    With elegant craftsmanship Strantzas delicately weaves a disquieting narrative through eerie and unexpected landscapes, charting an uncanny course through territories both bleak and buoyant, while further cementing his reputation as one of the finest practitioners of strange tales. Advance praise for “Nothing is Everything” “Simon Strantzas captures the creepiness of small town Ontario; there is something of Seth, of Alice Munro in his work, wonderfully tangled with the likes of Aickman and Jackson. Uncanny as a ventriloquist’s doll, but with a real, beating heart.” -Camilla Grudova, author of The Doll’s Alphabet “Welcome to Nothing is Everything, the latest collection by Simon Strantzas. Taking the paths less traveled to the human heart and mind, and excavating the strangeness that abides therein, Strantzas is one of the most striking writers working today.” -Angela Slatter, author of the World Fantasy Award-winning The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings “Simon Strantzas is Shirley Jackson-grade eerie, creating stories that are as unsettling as they are elegant.” -Kij Johnson, author of At the Mouth of The River of Bees “The unexpected has arrived, and has brought with it the unknown. Simon Strantzas’ stories arrive without warning, to offer those unknown gifts and sidelong glimpses that bring mystery close enough to touch.” -Kathe Koja, author of The Cipher, and Christopher Wild “Simon Strantzas's compelling stories unfold across a liminal landscape of small towns and ordinary situations where encounters with the uncanny are often revelatory. With his latest collection, he further cements his place as a significant voice among a wave of writers who are redefining the boundaries of genre, blending a literary sensibility with a powerful sense of the possibilities for transcendence in the everyday.” -Lynda E. Rucker, author of The Moon Will Look Strange, and You’ll Know When You Get There Simon Strantzas is the author of Burnt Black Suns (Hippocampus Press, 2014), Nightingale Songs (Dark Regions Press, 2011), Cold to the Touch (Tartarus Press, 2009), and Beneath the Surface (Humdrumming, 2008), as well as the editor of Aickman’s Heirs (Undertow Publications, 2015), a finalist for both the World Fantasy and British Fantasy Awards, and the winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. He also edited Shadows Edge (Gray Friar Press, 2013), and was the guest editor of The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 3 (Undertow Publications, 2016). In 2016, he co-founded the non-fiction journal, Thinking Horror, which is dedicated to exploring the literary field of horror and its various philosophies. His writing has been reprinted in a number of annual best-of anthologies, and published in venues such as Nightmare, Cemetery Dance, and Postscripts. His short story, “Pinholes in Black Muslin”, was a finalist for the British Fantasy Award, and his collection, Burnt Black Suns, a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. He lives with his wife in Toronto, Canada.

Sisyphean


Dempow Torishima - 2018
    The boss there is its president—a large creature of unstable, shifting form once called “human.” The world of his dedicated worker contains only the deck and the sea of mud surrounding it, and and the worker’s daily routine is anything but peaceful. A mosaic novel of extreme science and high weirdness, Sisyphean will change the way you see existence itself.A strange journey into the far future of genetic engineering, and working life. After centuries of tinkering, many human bodies only have a casual similarity to what we now know, but both work and school continue apace. Will the enigmatic sad sack known only as “the worker” survive the day? Will the young student Hanishibe get his questions about the biological future of humanity answered, or will he have to transfer to the department of theology? Will Umari and her master ever comprehend the secrets of nanodust?

Polymer


Caleb Wilson - 2018
    You've watched as a guy with throwing axes and ninja stars ascends stairs to fight a big furry werewolf with tentacles or a floating head of indeterminate origin. You've seen hunters. But you've never seen Polymer. Polymer's got style, Polymer's got sex appeal, Polymer's got panache. And you, lucky reader, get to join us right behind the glass in Sickleburg Castle where the battle of the century is about to commence. Who is the man behind the music, the monsters, the guts, the gore and the glory? Get ready for an event like no other.

A Metal Box Floating Between Stars and Other Stories


Jamie Lackey - 2018
    Journey within and away to find love across time, friendly and fearsome aliens, alternate realities, fungal zombies, and more.”'A Metal Box Floating Between Stars and Other Stories’ contains 19 stories. This book is a companion volume to 'The Blood of Four Gods and Other Stories’ previously published by the Air and Nothingness Press.

Tristopolis Requiem


John Meaney - 2018
    The city: Tristopolis, gothamesque and baroque, its unchanging sky deep purple, its elevators propelled by indentured wraiths, its power produced by necroflux reactors, fuelled by the bones of the dead. When powerful conspiracies threaten Tristopolis from the far side of the world, can a freed Donal find a way to stop them, and in the process find a reason to carry on existing?

The Almanac of Dust


Farah Rose Smith - 2018
    A scholar and metaphysical naturalist cares for his ailing wife as he studies The Almanac of Dust, a cryptic text that documents the presence of unusual manifestations of dust around the world.